


Stories Told By Candlelight

by Femalefonzie



Category: Ruby Gloom, The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Genre: Bisexual Characters, Canadian Cartoon Problems, F/F, F/M, Family Feels, Family Reunions, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Seriously he was a sweetheart, Skull Boy never finding his family really annoyed me when I was a kid, So when I was on a nostalgia binge of old cartoons this came to be, he deserved at least a guardian
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 11:30:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4562961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Femalefonzie/pseuds/Femalefonzie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of the Pumpkin King's missing heir had always been a popular one in Gloomsville. Everyone knew of the story but never the whole thing. Details always changed but the roots remained in tact.<br/>Jack Skellington and his beloved wife Sally, against all odds, managed to have one child, one baby boy to shower with their love, affection and hope for the future. Then in the dead of the night, he was stolen from them.<br/>Twelve years later, a group of friends sit around in their parlor, waiting for a summer storm to end, and telling this very tale. What they do not know is that Jack Skellington's missing son is closer than they think...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stories Told By Candlelight

As far as the weather went in Gloomsville, storms weren't as big of an issue as they were in other places. It came with having resident banshees bringing in the bad weather like magnets. The citizens of this town learned to roll with the unpredictable, to make the most out of even the worst weather. Camp outs in blizzards, picnics by tornados, fishing in hurricanes, anything that was thrown their way they could handle. Except for _this_. 

The sunlight stretched from the windows to every knook and cranny within the mansion. It practically scorched to the touch. 

Ruby was the only one brave enough to leave whatever possible shadows that could be found to hang blankets over the windows and block it out. She was used to being the one to handle thwas types of situations. For a ten year old girl she was incredibly responsible and handled her chores and commitments with an incredibly upbeat attitude. She hung the extra blankets they had up in the great hall first, and ran out shortly after. The rest of the house was still bright and shiny but for the moment they would have to just stay in the soul dark room and wait out the weather. 

Including Ruby herself, the residents of this house were a...tad different. Misery, Iris, the brothers Frank and Len, A crow named Poe and his muscle-for-hire acting brothers Edgar and Allen, Scaredy the bat, Doom Kitty and an annoying young ghost named Boo Boo. Dispite obvious differences the lot of them managed to get along well, they were all close friends, but there's only so much time you can spend in the presence of friends without growing annoyed. 

It started with Len and Frank. They had been working on lyrics for a new song originally but now were in the process of a harmony. They claimed to be, at the very least. It was more like they were strumming  the same chord over and over repeatedly while mourning the loss of their amp, all locked up in the garage fending for itself against the sun. Poe, who was in the middle of another chapter in his autobiography and sitting just to their right, attempted to drown it out by humming loudly to himself. This loud arrangement of sound, well increasingly pesky, did have a nice ring to it and soon Scaredy and Doom Kitty were drifting off. Boo Boo smirked to himself and got into position to give them both the scared of their lives. Knowing the inevitable response, Misery and Iris slowly inched away from the animals and moved their game of go fish closer to the window where Ruby was knitting. Skull Boy looked over at the girls then went back to organizing the bookcase. This wasn't going to end well...

Frank and Len played a loud chord and beat Boo Boo to the punch. Scaredy and Doom awoke with a scream, Poe slammed hard on his typewriter, Iris and Misery dropped their hands and even Skull Boy dropped a book he'd been holding. The only one who didn't seem suprised was Ruby who just went on knitting herself a scarf.

"Boys," Pow growled. "Would you mind keeping it down? Your music is stifling my creative juices!"

"Creative juices?" Iris asked. "It's an autobiograph! How is that creative?"

The crow just blew her comment off and stared daggers at the two young rockers who shrugged. It wasn't as if they had anything better to do at the moment. making music and eating was pretty much all they did and right now, the kitchen was not an option.  Poe groaned and chose to drop the conversation all together. 

Sensing a greater storm brewing on the horizon, Ruby sprung into action. She set her knitting supplies down and stood up, trying to liven the place up a bit. "How about we do something else, all of us?" She suggested. "um...the radio is out but we have lots of books! How about a story?"

Anything to distract them from the sun pouring in without any signs of stopping soon. Even Misery couldn't make it stop And bring back the clouds. For an hour she moped around the he house, completely stunned at this development. Listening to a story seemed like the only thing to do right now that wouldn't end with a fight. 

Skull Boy nodded and snatched the book he had dropped up off the floor. "Yeah! We could read the story of Yam and Ween again!"

"Ugh." Iris groaned. "We hear that story every year. I want to hear something new. Something different."

The young skeleton put the book back on the shelf and grabbed the one beside it. It was a newer book, leather bound with the title sketched into the cover in silver lettering. _The Nightmare Before Christmas_.

"What about this?" He asked. "It's the newest history book. All about the royal family of Halloween." 

"You mean Jack Skellington, King of The Pumpkin Patch?" Misery inauired. "An impressive man. A king, an inventor, some describe him as the happiest man on Earth." _Or rather....he had been._  

Scaredy winced and hid behind Doom Kitty, who only rolled her eyes in response. "I heard that he is the most frightful resident of Halloween Town." Reading a book on...someone like him sounded truly terrifying.

The others were already sold on the idea leaving the bat the odd man out. Skull Boy took a seat in the big armchair and opened the book in his lap as the others gathered around. He was known as the keeper of the tale, always putting every effort he could into whatever story he was spinning. 

"Halloween Town has always been the dricing force behind the holiday and the man overseeing al the town's efforts is none other than Jack Skellington, The Pumpkin King. The scariest and yet most peppy member of the community. He lived like a king, in a large and stately manor, beloved by the townsfolk. You would think he had it all.

Sadly, The Pumpkin King grew weary of the same old routine and in a depressed state of mind, wandered from his home for days upon days. The citizens of Halloween Town, The Mayor, The Vampires, The Witches, The Mad Scientist and his living doll creation Sally, and so on and so on, grew worried about their leader. Jack was fine, just in a rut. He wandered to the edge of town and by pure luck, stumbels upon the entrance to Christmas town-"

"Christmas Town?" Iris interjected, face scowling as she tried to wrap her mind around what this could mean. "What's Christmas?"

What was Christmas? Skull Boy flipped a head a couple of pages and showed the cyclops an illustration of tiny little critters in red and green frolicking in the snow with a large tree in the background. "I think it's like YamWeen. Only it's a bigger one. Celebrated more throughout the world."

"Weird." Frank and Len said in unison, scratching the back of their necks. "Definitely unusual but cool. Go on."

Skull Boy flipped back to the last page they were on and picked up where he had left off. 

"Anyway, Jack came to realize that this may have been fate. That he may have been meant to take over Christmas. So he went back home with renewed vigor and told them all his plans. They would kidnap the patron of Christmas, Sant Claus, and do his job for once to see if it would restore their passion in their work. Sally, the living doll, had her doubts but Jack and the others blew her off. They didn't see the danger they were headed towards.

In Halloween Town there dwelled a monster named Oogie Boogie who gambled and ate anything he could. Children he'd hired stole Santa Claus and prepared to feed him to the beast while Jack was out. Sally alone raced to stop him while Jack made a real mess of Christmas and was shot down by the military. Shortly after he had a revelation and realized that he was The Pumpkin King for a reason. It was his calling and he ran home to set things right. 

Jack faced Oogie Boogie to help Sally and Santa Claus, and once he subdued the monster, Jack and Sally and the citizens saw Santa off to fix what they had done. The Pumpkin King fell in love with the living doll and before the next Christmas rolled around, the two were married-."

Misery and Iris started giggling just loud enough to drown out what their friend was saying. He rolled his eyes, ignoring the "Humina Humina" Misery loved to call out whenever romance was even brought up. This time Frank and Len joined in with wolf whistling and hooting.

"You're all ridiculous." He mumbled, and flipped to the next page. "Do you want me to finish the story or are you all just going to sit around hooting like owls?" 

The sun outside seemed to be Getting brighter so the crew all nodded that they would like to finish the story of the Skellingtons to kill time. Skull Boy cleared his throat before continuing the final chapter of the story.

"Jack and Sally were as in love as anyone had ever been-" 

Iris gagged loudly but didn't say anything. 

"-As anyone had ever been and after years of marriage, they decided they wanted to have a child. Now, being a skeleton and a living doll trting to have a baby is problematic for...obvious reasons-"

Len raised his hand but didn't wait to blurt out his question. "Do skeletons even have junk? I mean, really. And would it be a bone or-"

Frank quickly covered his younger brother's mouth to prevent anymore words from coming out But the damage was already done. Skull Boy blushed a dark shade of red and hid his face behind the book. Misery and Iris, being the little perverts they were, burst out laughing And the others all had to do a double take. Misery full on laughing like this hadn't happened before. Everyone had to take a moment, step back and watch.

Skull Boy wasn't sure if he should correct him or just move on with the story and hope it was dropped. Luckily, Poe came to his aid. 

"Len, my dear boy, everyone has reproductive organs. Including animated skeletons and dolls sewn up in labs. It became law that species be granted the right to reproduce as they so please back in 1862 So all experiments be given the necessary organs during their creation. It's why they have genders and use gender pronouns instead of using them or they and being ungendered though gender fluid ones exist. What I believe was Jack and Sally's problem was...they were for lack of a better term...mixed."

"Mixed?" Len repeated though his words were muffled by his brother's steady hand.

"He was a skeleton. She was a living doll. Separate species. It's hard for their genes to mix."

Hybrids did exist in both their world and the wild but typically if two species mixed, they were similar. A wolf and a dog, for example, mated and created a new type of wolf in North America. Zombies and Frankenstein type beings. A skeleton and a living doll would have too many differences in their chromosomes and DNA to produce a healthy child easily. 

It could have taken years, centuries even.

Skull Boy found where he'd left off and picked the story back up. 

"-They wanted to have a baby, A Pumpkin Prince or Princess to follow after the King and Queen, but everything they tried to do seemed to fail. They went to all the great scientists, doctors, anyone who would listen but it was to no avail. Even Sally's own creator,Dr. Finklestein, couldn't help them. Just when it seemed like they would never have their own child and they were beginning to loose hope, a miracle happened. On the night of the blue moon, it had been a while since it happened last, they managed to conceive an heir. He was born on October 31st, on Halloween. A little prince named Samuel Bram Skellington, S.B. For short."

The unusual name had been thanks to his grandfather. According to the doctor, Samuel meant intelligent and Bram...well...Sally just found the name cute. 

Poe smiled and cleaned his glasses. "I remember when the Prince was born. The whole country was in a buzz! You couldn't walk two feet down the street without running into a group talking about him! I actually saw the royal family back then, you know? It was shortly after Prince S.B.'s birth. They were passing by and me, Edgar and Allen waited outside to catch a glimpse of them."

If there was anything the friends had learned over the years, it was that the old crow was an unreliable narrator. Odds were, he just spied a picture of them traveling through town in the paper. Skull Boy decided to finish this story up before they got any further interruptions. 

"Thats good," He said before starting again. "Prince S.B. was almost the spitting image of his father though he had his mother's eyes. He was going to be the future of the kingdom, from the time he turned thirteen the Prince was going to be groomed to lead. Learn how to hone the magic his father had in his bones as well, how to lead his people to prosperity and happiness," Skull Boy frowned, his voice dropping slowly when he saw what was on the next page. "...But it wasn't meant to be. Just days before his first birthday, Prince S.B. was snatched up by some cruel and undoubtably evil does in the middle of the night. Jack and Sally were heartbroken, they searched for years to find him, organized countless search parties...but he never turned up." And that was the end of the book. A missing Prince and two poor parents who didn't know if their baby was alive or hurt or worse. He knew the feeling, a little too well, of not knowing if the people closest to you were calling out for your help and you didn't know where to go to help them. Skull Boy shut the book, stood up and placed it back on the shelf.

"Wow." Misery said, summarizing the opinions of everyone else in the roo. "That story was a downer. And that's coming from me."

"What are you going to do?" Iris asked with a shrug. "It's been what? Twelve years since then? The Prince is most likely-" she locked eye on Scaredy who was trembling in fright at the idea of someone abducting a small child and decided to be less graphic. "...gone."

"Twelve years?" Poe repeated. Twelve years ago exactly. It was kind of ironic. In just two days, they would be celebrating Skill Boy's birthday or rather the day he had been discovered by Poe and his brother down in the swamp. It had been a chilling day if memory serves right and they had gone to make sure that they had left nothing there at an early date. By the bank there had been an old wicker basket containing a tiny skeletal baby. The whole ordeal reminded Poe of the story of baby Moses in the river and though it had not been his idea originally to take the boy in indefinitely, he had been the first to discover him. There was a missing Prince and baby Skull Boy found in the swamp just days within each other...

...Could it be....?

The crow scanned Skull Boy over as he was leaving. Poor posture, shabby clothing that was reminiscing of the _emo phase_ that once plagued the nation, improper grammar dispite Poe's best attempts to educate the boy...

If Skull Boy was royalty Poe was the king of France and would eat his hat. 

What they had here was a strange coincidence, surely. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when I stream old cartoons from my hold good nonstop on demand. Seriously though, it was a kick ass show. I loved it to death and was always annoyed Skull Boy didn't get to meet any of his family. This is my fix.  
> Really should update more stories soon. Oh well, this one is a quick one.  
> Enjoy


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